It has been fully recognized in recent years that cancer can start in just one of the body's billions of cells, triggered by a stray of radiation, a trace of toxic chemical, a virus or a random error in the transcription of the cell's genetic message. Once the genetic message of the cell has been altered by any external or internal influence, the cell starts to divide to form other abnormal cells, under a process that violates normal genetic restraints. The immune system of the body, on the other hand, which is normally alert to the presence of any type of alien cells, fails to respond properly and its defense units refrain from attacking and destroying the intruder cells. Unlike healthy cells, which stop reproducing after repairing damage or contributing to normal growth, the aberrant cells (cancerous cells) have no boundary in connection with the division properties and continue to proliferate widly, forming a growing mass or tumor that expands into healthy tissue and competes with normal cells for nutrition. Also, the malevolent cells may be transferred into the bloodstream or the lymphatic system which carries them all over the body thus creating what is termed metastasis.
While workers in the art usually have the strong feeling that cancer could be stopped if the altered genetic message of the cell could be restored, no means have been deviced up to the present date to effect such restoration. Therefore, the customary and what are considered the best treatments for cancer is to have the lifes of the patients prolonged for a few years by one or a combination of three kinds of often unpleasant, debilitating and sometimes disfiguring treatment, namely, surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Regardless of the existence of these types of treatments commonly applied to cancerous patients, two-thirds of all cancer victims evantually die of the disease.
In more recent years some further and more remarkable developments have been made through the production of a relatively efficient vaccine for treating human cancer in breast, lungs, ovaries, cervix and gastrointestinal tract, said vaccine being prepared from a tumor material derived from at least one or more human cancers developing in a specific predetermined organ and admixing several of said materials and treating the same to produce vaccines which are relatively effective against the development of cancer in the above mentioned organs of the human body. However, the percentage of relief obtained by the patients is relatively low and the production of said vaccine is expensive and painstaking, whereby this may be considered at most as a partial cure and as one of the best efforts made in the recent times towards the alleviation of this affliction.
One other most hopeful discovery made in recent years is interferon (IF) which seems to be a protein contained and produced in minute amount by living cells, but while the alleviation of the disease through the use of interferon seems to be very promising, the obstacles encountered in the development of production of said substance are almost impossible to overcome, because interferon is a very specific substance which is produced by animals and which acts only in animals of the same species and is not of general application. In other words, interferon produced by human cells is only effective against cancer of humans, whereas interferon produced by other types of mammals or vertebrate animals are specific only in the same species of the animals whose cells produce said interferon, whereby there is no possibility of obtaining animal interferon to be used in humans or viceversa. Therefore, the only manner of having an interferon which may be active against human cancer is to obtain said interferon from human cells and this, obviously, represents an almost unbeatable obstacle in view of the tremendously high cost and the exaggerately small amounts in which interferon may be produced, whereby this technique may not be the best solution for cancer disease which, only in the United States of America kills around half a million people every year.
Therefore, regardless of the tremendous efforts and expenses made by worldwide institutions endeavored in the research of cancer disease, up to the present date no reasonable cure has been developed which may be regarded as specific or at least reasonably effective against many kinds of cancer. Therefore, the only way of attacking cancer and this only in certain instances such as in melanoma and certain adenocarcinomas of the mammal gland, is to discover the cancer in an early stage of development and to apply surgery and thereafter radiation and chemotherapy to try to cure the disease, with a low percentage of satisfactory cases.